In this paper, a new single image acquisition super-resolution method is proposed to increase image resolution of
diffusion weighted (DW) images. Based on a nonlocal patch-based strategy, the proposed method uses ...[+]

In this paper, a new single image acquisition super-resolution method is proposed to increase image resolution of
diffusion weighted (DW) images. Based on a nonlocal patch-based strategy, the proposed method uses a
non-diffusion image (b0) to constrain the reconstruction of DW images. An extensive validation is presented
with a
gold standard
built on averaging 10 high-resolution DW acquis
itions. A comparison with classical interpo-
lation methods such as trilinear and B-spline demonstrates the competitive results of our proposed approach in
termsofimprovementsonimagereconstruction,fractiona
lanisotropy(FA)estimation,generalizedFAandangular
reconstruction for tensor and high angular resolut
ion diffusion imaging (HARDI) models. Besides,
fi
rst results of
reconstructed ultra high resolution DW
images are presented at 0.6 × 0.6 × 0.6 mm
3
and0.4×0.4×0.4mm
3
using our
gold standard
based on the average of 10 acquisitions, and on a single acquisition. Finally,
fi
ber tracking
results show the potential of the proposed super-resolution approach to accurately analyze white matter brain architecture.[-]

We thank the reviewers for their useful comments that helped improve the paper. We also want to thank the Pr Louis Collins for proofreading this paper and his fruitful comments. Finally, we want to thank Martine Bordessoules ...[+]

We thank the reviewers for their useful comments that helped improve the paper. We also want to thank the Pr Louis Collins for proofreading this paper and his fruitful comments. Finally, we want to thank Martine Bordessoules for her help during image acquisition of DWI used to build the phantom. This work has been supported by the French grant "HR-DTI" ANR-10-LABX-57 funded by the TRAIL from the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche within the context of the Investments for the Future program. This work has been also partially supported by the French National Agency for Research (Project MultImAD; ANR-09-MNPS-015-01) and by the Spanish grant TIN2011-26727 from the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion. This work benefited from the use of FSL (http://fsl.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/fsl/fslwiki/), FiberNavigator (code.google.com/p/fibernavigator/), MRtrix software (http://www. brain.org.au/software/mrtrix/) and ITKsnap (www.itk.org).[-]